The Man in the Attic

My father died of cancer when I was 12 years old. We lived on the 200
block of Union Street in Circleville, Ohio. On the night of his funeral
service I had stayed home by myself while my mother went to my older
sister's house with my younger brother. I was staying up late (about
12:30 A.M.) watching a
Godzilla movie on TV, when the TV shut of for no apparent
reason. At this exact moment, I also heard two noises that I knew well.
One was the squeak of my father's wheelchair and the other was him
coughing. Now being 12 years old, this naturally scared the bejesus out
of me. I ran out of that house as fast as I could, and down the street
to a teacher's house who lived about 3 houses down. He came up to my
house and searched it from top to bottom. He found nothing. The
wheelchair was still on the back porch were it had been put when my
father was admitted to the hospital. That teacher stayed with me until
my sister could come and get me at 1:30 A.M. He was able to calm me down
and explained that if my father really was in the house, he was not
there to harm me. But I was still scared all the same.

Other strange occurrences happened at this house also after my dad's death.
My nephew was the apple of my fathers eye because he was his first
grandchild. The little boy would often tell us about the "man upstairs"
who came out of the attic to play with him. This also freaked me out
because there was only one room upstairs at the Union Street house and
it happened to be my bedroom. One day my mom needed to run to the store
and both my brother and I were going with her. My nephew, who was about
4 at the time, refused to go with us. My mom told him we were leaving
and walked out the front door. The front door had a deadbolt which was
about 4 1/2 feet off the floor. It automatically locked as we left. We
walked out to the car acting like we were going to leave my nephew, when
he appeared on the front porch. When my mom asked him how he got out of
the house. He told us the man from upstairs came out of the attic, came
downstairs, and unlocked the door! I was really freaked out about this
and refused to go back in the house for quite a long time.

My mom said my dad told her that he knew he was going to die. He told her he
would sit on the mantle over the fireplace and watch over us. I haven't
had any more experiences like this since I was 12/13 years old, although
I have had the occasional "dream" where my father visits me just to
talk. I am now 38 years old and still get a little emotional thinking
about these happenings.